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Mission to Universe
General Benjamin Shore was heading for the stars under forged orders - and in defiance of the commands of the President. He was leaving Earth in an untested ship with a crew chosen by necessity and with nothing but faith to guide him. His only hope was to find habitable worlds in the unexplored reaches of space ahead.
Thus began Man's first mission to the uncharted universe.
Shore had no illusions. Before him lay danger, probable disappointment - even death. But nothing had prepared him for the nightmare he would have to face on the planet of the Gray-Furs...for the menace of the Golden People who had driven all other races from Galactic Center - or for what awaited him if he returned to the world he called home!
Thus began Man's first mission to the uncharted universe.
Shore had no illusions. Before him lay danger, probable disappointment - even death. But nothing had prepared him for the nightmare he would have to face on the planet of the Gray-Furs...for the menace of the Golden People who had driven all other races from Galactic Center - or for what awaited him if he returned to the world he called home!
- GenresScience FictionFiction
213 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1965
27 people are currently reading
197 people want to read
About the author
Gordon R. Dickson
588 books376 followersGordon Rupert Dickson was an American science fiction author. He was born in Canada, then moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota as a teenager. He is probably most famous for his Childe Cycle and the Dragon Knight series. He won three Hugo awards and one Nebula award.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
February 6, 2010
1st line: "Ben Shore woke--and the long interior of the barracks-like building around him was still, moonlit dark."
It's funny to read this because it seems completely cliche now, almost like a parody of an SF novel...but of course in 1965 most of this was probably brand new and exciting!
What we have is General Ben Shore, who hijacks the just-finished "phase ship" (whose infinite probability drive is clearly what Douglas Adams was parodying with the Heart of Gold) so that he can go off to search for other planets for Earth to colonize instead of getting into a nuclear war.
He pretty much behaves like a 14-year-old the entire time, all OH IT'S SO TRAGIC I'M ALWAYS AN OUTSIDER and OH GOD I CAN'T BELIEVE THE CREW MEMBERS SAW ME CRY THAT ONE TIME WHEN ALIENS TOOK OVER MY BRAIN.
Oh and then he falls in love with the ship's nurse. I guess just because she was there, since they never had a conversation about anything personal, ever.
It's funny to read this because it seems completely cliche now, almost like a parody of an SF novel...but of course in 1965 most of this was probably brand new and exciting!
What we have is General Ben Shore, who hijacks the just-finished "phase ship" (whose infinite probability drive is clearly what Douglas Adams was parodying with the Heart of Gold) so that he can go off to search for other planets for Earth to colonize instead of getting into a nuclear war.
He pretty much behaves like a 14-year-old the entire time, all OH IT'S SO TRAGIC I'M ALWAYS AN OUTSIDER and OH GOD I CAN'T BELIEVE THE CREW MEMBERS SAW ME CRY THAT ONE TIME WHEN ALIENS TOOK OVER MY BRAIN.
Oh and then he falls in love with the ship's nurse. I guess just because she was there, since they never had a conversation about anything personal, ever.
June 11, 2018
FTL travel to the extreme
I enjoyed reading this book. The the idea of instantaneous travel is very alluring. The only problem I had with this book was it seem more like several related short stories put together in one book. Each story seemed a bit incomplete like there should have been more world-building or more specifics as to the aliens and their worlds encountered. But all in all it was a good book.
I enjoyed reading this book. The the idea of instantaneous travel is very alluring. The only problem I had with this book was it seem more like several related short stories put together in one book. Each story seemed a bit incomplete like there should have been more world-building or more specifics as to the aliens and their worlds encountered. But all in all it was a good book.
March 25, 2010
Gordon R. Dickson is one of those legends that gets spoken of solemnly and with great respect. Together with Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, H. Beam Piper, Hugo Gernsback and John W. Campbell, as well as many others he helped to forge science fiction from the bedrock of literature. Much of what we know about science today was brand new back then and a lot of it wasn't even widely accepted. Many of Einstein's theories he didn't believe himself and there was a great deal of discussion in scientific circles about the reality of quantum mechanics.
I'm not entirely sure that any of that was ever resolved but we kind of just accept it now because it's the best explanation we have.
Much of what these writers created was based on that bleeding edge of physics and mathematical theory as they understood it at the time. Now it seems silly or outdated but when it was written it felt every bit as prophetic as some of our modern science fiction does.
Four years before man landed on the moon Gordon R. Dickson wrote Mission to Universe.
In 1927, in Copenhagen, Werner Heisenberg developed his Uncertainty Principle. Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle simply states that the change in position of a particle times the change in its momentum is never smaller than a fixed fraction of Planck's constant. Or, basically, we can't know both the momentum and position with exactness at any given moment.
This was an essential discovery in defining quantum state phenomena. When particles, such as electrons, gain and lose energy they change from one quantum state to another, with no time in between states.
Expanding this idea to a mass significantly larger than 9.11 times ten to the minus thirty one kilograms is not very practical. Planck's constant is so small that the region of error becomes completely negligible.
However, if we could apply Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle to larger objects such as, say a spacecraft, then perhaps we could also make that spacecraft change quantum states by exerting a very large magnetic field. Then when it returns to it's natural quantum state it will be elsewhere. (This doesn't work, by the way, there is a lot more going on than this simplified model of quantum physics implies, but it works for the story.)
Doctor Benjamin Shore, newly commissioned General, has succeeded in designing and building the first phase ship, a ship capable of traveling any distance in a single instant – and the president of the United States orders him to keep it on the ground. With all the countries on the Earth pointing nuclear weapons at each other the powers-that-be fear that any kind of rocket launch will set off nuclear Armageddon.
Determined to find new planets on which the human race can colonize in order to ease the tensions caused by overpopulation General Shore forges orders from the President and takes his crew into space, phasing straight from ground into orbit.
They depart for the core of the galaxy, hoping that the greater density of stars will provide a significantly improved probability of finding a habitable planet.
As you might guess, things don't go well. Some people get killed and alien planets are just that, alien and completely unpredictable.
One of Gordon R. Dickson's skills has always been his flawed and believable characters. General Shore is no exception. He is reclusive, socially inept, cynical and chauvinistic. He tries to leave the women behind and then gets offended when one of the other officers allows one of them to help him do some mechanical work. (This is an aspect of the character and not the author, as other books by Dickson do not treat women this way). He does not connect with people and so feels completely alone. He also thinks that everybody else is stupid, or at least not as smart as himself.
He sets himself up as the General of this group of scientists, picked to go to space only because they were the people around at the time when he forged the papers. He rules them ruthlessly, usually to their benefit, training them to act instantly to his commands and to see him as a commander and not as a friend. He doesn't bemoan this duty, nor does he relish it. It is simply what is necessary.
The science mostly makes sense. Aliens use a Faraday cage to trap the phase ship. The phase ship itself, while able to travel instantly takes several weeks of preparation calculations. Everything must be taken into effect, the movement of the galaxy, the movement of the stars and planets in the galaxy. If the coordinates are calculated wrong then the ship could reappear inside of a star or in the gravity well of a planet.
The story is full of twists in usual Gordon R. Dickson style. Things that seem familiar turn out to be strange and things are not what they seem or are expected to be. Gordon R. Dickson was a master of his craft and he continually carved brilliant stories based on the science of his time. I have never read any Gordon R. Dickson that I didn't enjoy. I've also only found a few of his books that I thought were riveting (Forever Man, Soldier Ask Not). This is not one of them but highly recommended anyway.
On a side note, this book was dedicated to Lester del Rey.
(7/10)
I'm not entirely sure that any of that was ever resolved but we kind of just accept it now because it's the best explanation we have.
Much of what these writers created was based on that bleeding edge of physics and mathematical theory as they understood it at the time. Now it seems silly or outdated but when it was written it felt every bit as prophetic as some of our modern science fiction does.
Four years before man landed on the moon Gordon R. Dickson wrote Mission to Universe.
In 1927, in Copenhagen, Werner Heisenberg developed his Uncertainty Principle. Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle simply states that the change in position of a particle times the change in its momentum is never smaller than a fixed fraction of Planck's constant. Or, basically, we can't know both the momentum and position with exactness at any given moment.
This was an essential discovery in defining quantum state phenomena. When particles, such as electrons, gain and lose energy they change from one quantum state to another, with no time in between states.
Expanding this idea to a mass significantly larger than 9.11 times ten to the minus thirty one kilograms is not very practical. Planck's constant is so small that the region of error becomes completely negligible.
However, if we could apply Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle to larger objects such as, say a spacecraft, then perhaps we could also make that spacecraft change quantum states by exerting a very large magnetic field. Then when it returns to it's natural quantum state it will be elsewhere. (This doesn't work, by the way, there is a lot more going on than this simplified model of quantum physics implies, but it works for the story.)
Doctor Benjamin Shore, newly commissioned General, has succeeded in designing and building the first phase ship, a ship capable of traveling any distance in a single instant – and the president of the United States orders him to keep it on the ground. With all the countries on the Earth pointing nuclear weapons at each other the powers-that-be fear that any kind of rocket launch will set off nuclear Armageddon.
Determined to find new planets on which the human race can colonize in order to ease the tensions caused by overpopulation General Shore forges orders from the President and takes his crew into space, phasing straight from ground into orbit.
They depart for the core of the galaxy, hoping that the greater density of stars will provide a significantly improved probability of finding a habitable planet.
As you might guess, things don't go well. Some people get killed and alien planets are just that, alien and completely unpredictable.
One of Gordon R. Dickson's skills has always been his flawed and believable characters. General Shore is no exception. He is reclusive, socially inept, cynical and chauvinistic. He tries to leave the women behind and then gets offended when one of the other officers allows one of them to help him do some mechanical work. (This is an aspect of the character and not the author, as other books by Dickson do not treat women this way). He does not connect with people and so feels completely alone. He also thinks that everybody else is stupid, or at least not as smart as himself.
He sets himself up as the General of this group of scientists, picked to go to space only because they were the people around at the time when he forged the papers. He rules them ruthlessly, usually to their benefit, training them to act instantly to his commands and to see him as a commander and not as a friend. He doesn't bemoan this duty, nor does he relish it. It is simply what is necessary.
The science mostly makes sense. Aliens use a Faraday cage to trap the phase ship. The phase ship itself, while able to travel instantly takes several weeks of preparation calculations. Everything must be taken into effect, the movement of the galaxy, the movement of the stars and planets in the galaxy. If the coordinates are calculated wrong then the ship could reappear inside of a star or in the gravity well of a planet.
The story is full of twists in usual Gordon R. Dickson style. Things that seem familiar turn out to be strange and things are not what they seem or are expected to be. Gordon R. Dickson was a master of his craft and he continually carved brilliant stories based on the science of his time. I have never read any Gordon R. Dickson that I didn't enjoy. I've also only found a few of his books that I thought were riveting (Forever Man, Soldier Ask Not). This is not one of them but highly recommended anyway.
On a side note, this book was dedicated to Lester del Rey.
(7/10)
May 22, 2024
Not bad but not particularly good.
With the world on the verge of WWIII our protagonist steals the newest star ship to find a habitable planet for humans. What follows is some planet hopping adventure with different challenges at each new planet.
This book is sort of dark. The future is bleak, the protagonist is cold and distant (sort of Hornblower esque), and the planetary adventures don’t exactly go very well. Sort of like a bleak version of Star Trek.
If you like stellar exploration tales you’ll get some mileage out of this, but otherwise skip it
With the world on the verge of WWIII our protagonist steals the newest star ship to find a habitable planet for humans. What follows is some planet hopping adventure with different challenges at each new planet.
This book is sort of dark. The future is bleak, the protagonist is cold and distant (sort of Hornblower esque), and the planetary adventures don’t exactly go very well. Sort of like a bleak version of Star Trek.
If you like stellar exploration tales you’ll get some mileage out of this, but otherwise skip it
October 19, 2019
Mostly uninteresting but with one big claim to fame.
This older Dickson book has a fairly boring and predictable plot. You'll probably have guessed the ending before you finish the second chapter. But the book has one feature that makes it worth checking out: Dickson's "Phase Shift Drive", the FTL technology used in the story. This is basically the prototypical instance of Douglas Adam's Infinite Improbability Drive from his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. The description and method of operation are almost identical (though you won't need a nice, hot cup of tea with the Phase Shift Drive).
You start off having a finite probability of being in location A and zero probability of being anywhere else. You turn on the Phase Shift Drive. Your probability of being at location A drops to zero and your ship simultaneously exists at every point in the universe. You turn off the phase shift drive and it increases your probability of being in location B to a large finite number. Apparently a fair amount of calculation is needed to load the desired location B into the drive before starting it up but the actual transit happens very quickly.
Dickson's Phase Shift Drive predates Adams Infinite Improbability Drive by a couple of decades. Was Adams aware of it? Was it really the inspiration for the drive in HHGG? We'll probably never know but it's fun to ponder. I'm not sure the crazy drive tech is worth reading an otherwise boring book but definite gets points for fun trivia...
This older Dickson book has a fairly boring and predictable plot. You'll probably have guessed the ending before you finish the second chapter. But the book has one feature that makes it worth checking out: Dickson's "Phase Shift Drive", the FTL technology used in the story. This is basically the prototypical instance of Douglas Adam's Infinite Improbability Drive from his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. The description and method of operation are almost identical (though you won't need a nice, hot cup of tea with the Phase Shift Drive).
You start off having a finite probability of being in location A and zero probability of being anywhere else. You turn on the Phase Shift Drive. Your probability of being at location A drops to zero and your ship simultaneously exists at every point in the universe. You turn off the phase shift drive and it increases your probability of being in location B to a large finite number. Apparently a fair amount of calculation is needed to load the desired location B into the drive before starting it up but the actual transit happens very quickly.
Dickson's Phase Shift Drive predates Adams Infinite Improbability Drive by a couple of decades. Was Adams aware of it? Was it really the inspiration for the drive in HHGG? We'll probably never know but it's fun to ponder. I'm not sure the crazy drive tech is worth reading an otherwise boring book but definite gets points for fun trivia...
September 26, 2021
I don't know if it's me getting older, being farther away in time from when the book was written or a combination of both, but it's harder to enjoy old SF books. The constant anachronisms of technology and social mores are jarring and take me out of the story. I need to go back and reread the ones I loved like Dune and Foundation and the like and see what I take from them now.
June 13, 2018
This book is difficult to read because the Kindle version has lots of spelling mistakes. Storyline is also difficult to follow. The premise for traveling thousands of light years within hours is interesting. Overall, it is not a great book.
April 12, 2019
Not bad but
Horrible editing and spell check, bad enough to break the flow of the story. Otherwise a typical predictable Dickson story, in that he springs surprises out of while cloth.
Horrible editing and spell check, bad enough to break the flow of the story. Otherwise a typical predictable Dickson story, in that he springs surprises out of while cloth.
December 4, 2017
Hasn't worn well over time
November 28, 2019
Fast paced easy to read first contact novel !! Pretty good
January 17, 2022
I’m trying to be better about not finishing books that I don’t like and This was one of those. Really fuckin boring.
March 27, 2024
Dry and unintesting
I did my best. It took way too long to get started and when it did, it just hung in place. I made it to the 25% mark and DNF'ed it. 🤷♂️
I did my best. It took way too long to get started and when it did, it just hung in place. I made it to the 25% mark and DNF'ed it. 🤷♂️
May 4, 2024
A step back in time when men could keep women out of space, or at least try to, then amputate a leg with a year's medical training, welcome indeed to the Mission to the Universe.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 1, 2014
Not up to par with the best of Dickson's stuff--he gives us late "golden age" sci-fi with a helpful coating of Edgar Rice Burroughs and maybe a little of Heinlein's adolescent stuff. It's an unwieldy conglomeration for s story dominated by a purposefully unlikable--but not unsympathetic--protagonist who sees his responsibility as embracing the solitude of command and making the hard (cold) choices. His efforts to stand apart from the men and women he leads ultimately isolate him from the reader as well. Not a waste of my time, but Dickson is once of the great voices of his time and this one isn't up to par.
January 9, 2012
Grade C-.
April 5, 2012
A good story by a writer one can rely on to create a good story.
May 6, 2012
Entertaining first contact book
May 8, 2014
Read this along time ago.
I liked the way the ship got around, by folding space rather than going from a to b.
I liked the way the ship got around, by folding space rather than going from a to b.
Read
March 25, 2019Along with Harry Harrison's Skyfall and Piers Anthony's Macroscope, this novel was somehow on my headboard in the early 1980s. I read these three, and they started a two decade plus passion for science fiction (and, I guess, fantasy as well), that had my read virtually all of Asimov, Heinlein, Pohl, Herbert, Eddings, Card, Aldiss, Silverberg, Feist, Donaldson, Jordan, Dickson and Anthony. (I've got a few Harrison, but haven't got to them yet). On this basis, I guess this novel must have been pretty good. However, I cannot in all honesty say I remember anything about it at all.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews